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Philosophy

Undergraduate Program

Major Overview

Philosophy has long concerned itself with fundamental questions regarding existence, value, and truth—What is real? Why are we here? What is the nature of our moral obligations? To that end, our curriculum will use the history of philosophy to ground you in its major disciplines, including ethics and metaphysics, and will include an especial focus on Greek philosophy, the early modern and modern period, and 20th century continental philosophy. You will be introduced to the fundamental methods of philosophical inquiry with a historical overview of Western philosophy, from ancient to contemporary philosophical thought, which will allow you to develop your own philosophical interests within a broad range of topic-oriented courses across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Learning Environment

Your core classes will cover the history of philosophy and philosophical logic, while also reinforcing your ability to articulate philosophy’s different disciplines. As you choose courses that focus on your philosophical disciplines of interest, including epistemology and aesthetics, and progress in your studies, our interdisciplinary curriculum will encourage you to take a comparative look at philosophy with another discipline or practice, like cinema or political economy.

Major Components

Build Your Degree

With every single one of our majors, you’ll find a carefully curated medley of core courses and electives, which will provide you with the tools you need to establish an unshakeable foundation in the principles and concepts fundamental to your growth within your disciplines of choice. Many majors also enable you to specialize further within the broader area of study.

Core Courses

Core Courses

We aim to help you develop a range of skills, capacities, and modes of inquiry that will be crucial for your future since employers and graduate schools are looking for the critical thinking and innovative problem-solving skills that are associated with a liberal arts education, including sophisticated writing abilities, willingness to pose difficult questions, and an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts surrounding a topic or decision.

Electives

With the three class options that you choose from the “Exploring Your Questions” electives, you will concentrate on topics with which you will be able to engage during your time at AUP and afterwards, including philosophy’s historical inquiries into the nature of the body and the historical relationship between theater and philosophy.

Core Curriculum

We aim to help you develop a range of skills, capacities, and modes of inquiry that will be crucial for your future since employers and graduate schools are looking for the critical thinking and innovative problem-solving skills that are associated with a liberal arts education, including sophisticated writing abilities, willingness to pose difficult questions, and an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts surrounding a topic or decision.

Core Courses I

PL1100 History Of Philosophy I: Ancient & Medieval

Formerly PL2011. This course offers an overview of ancient and medieval philosophy. Beginning with the earliest Greek philosophers and ending with the late medieval founding fathers of modern scientific thought, we will read and discuss various answers these thinkers gave to questions such as: 'What is a good life?' or 'How can I reconcile my faith with what reason tells me?' Readings include Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Seneca, Plotinus, Anselm, Avicenna, Abelard, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas and Nicolaus of Autrecourt.

Formerly PL2022. This course aims to provide a solid and comprehensive grounding in modern philosophy focusing on the main issues and theories of late Renaissance philosophy, modern Rationalism and Empiricism, philosophies of the Enlightenment, Critical philosophy, modern Idealism, Phenomenology and some questions of analytic philosophy. It offers an introduction to the works of the major figures of this tradition.

This course is designed to highlight discrete mathematical structures. Discusses propositional logic, proofs and mathematical induction, matrices of relations and digraphs, set theory and number bases, combinatorial analysis, graph theory and Boolean algebra.The prerequisite for this course is MA1010 or above or CS 1040.

In this course, via the study of Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, students learn to explain the major
historical sub-disciplines of philosophy – metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics and political
philosophy. Students should be able to identify the projects, questions, arguments and key concepts
of each of these sub-disciplines within at least two moments in the history of philosophy.
PL 2070

Under the supervision of the major advisor, students prepare a portfolio of at least 5 essays from their major courses, along with relevant work in other courses, and identify, evaluate and justify the personal focus of their work in an introductory essay. Examined orally by a panel of faculty.

Core Courses II (choose three)

PL2041 Environmental Ethics

Introduction to ethics by the example of environmental ethics, exploring the role of humans as moral agents with regard to other living beings, the whole planet or its biosphere, and future generations. Through cases studies and to understand implicit assumptions and theoretical problems of standpoints taken by stakeholders in the debate.

Systematic introduction to core questions of the philosophy of mind: What is consciousness? How
does the mind relate to the body? How does the mind relate to the world through perception, thought,
emotions, and actions? Case-based exploration of the consequences answers to these questions have
for our conception of, e.g., reality, social relations, moral values, and a person or self.

What is Art? What is Beauty? How can I know what is beautiful? And what does it mean to me? These are some of Aesthetics’ main questions as it is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and value of art and the criteria of artistic judgment and experience. Various answers have been given throughout the history of philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and today’s analytical or postmodern philosophy, making of aesthetics a vibrant and dynamic discipline, constantly revitalised by new art forms and critical concepts. Through a thorough historical survey of the notion students learn to discuss art and beauty in a time when these classical notions are undergoing very important changes. Everyone is encouraged to bring in his or her own experience of art. There is no prerequisite for this course.

Political philosophy forms that branch of philosophy that reflects on the specificity of the political. Why are humans, as Aristotle argued, political animals? How are they political? What are the means and ends of the political, and how best does one organize the political with such questions in mind? The course offers a topic-oriented approach to the fundamental problems underlying political theory and practice.

This course explores the impact of modern science upon philosophy through an exploration of the fundamental texts of classical metaphysics - Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, Spinoza's Ethics, Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics and The Monadology - an examination guided by the question of what is it to act with freedom and grace in an infinite universe ruled by the laws of nature.

In this course we shall examine the birth of empiricism in polemics over the origins of knowledge and political authority, the limits of human reason, and the possibility of philosophy itself finding a way out of the seventeenth century's religious wars and tyranny towards the creation of free and tolerant societies of rational individuals. Readings from Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume.